IndyCar - Honda Indy Toronto - PREVIEW

Friday, July 6, 2012 - 10:00

Lotus looking good in Canada

The 10th round of the 2012 season will take place on the 1.75-mile temporary street circuit at Toronto’s Exhibition Place, by the lakeshore. And Lotus is excited because the engine builder is packing an upgrade.

Lotus HVM Racing driver Simona De Silvestro is looking forward to a great race weekend. The Swiss Miss is hoping to see some improvements on her #78 machine when the newly installed Lotus engine runs its first laps on the Toronto street circuit.

“Lotus will be bringing us an update, before every race, starting this weekend” she said. “We’ll see how Toronto works out, but I think with an upgraded engine, we should have better results. We just need to keep focusing on what we are doing. For sure, it would be great to run in the top 10, that would be really good for us. We are going to go to Toronto with an open mind. I’m excited to see what this new engine can do.”

She added: “It’s been frustrating so far this season, because we had a strong race car at Detroit and again at Iowa, but with less power, it was so hard for us to pass,” she said. “We seem to be able to keep a good pace, but when it’s time to pass, we don’t have the speed to do it.”

Director of Lotus Racing Claudio Berro says: "We sent IndyCar a list of modifications we wanted to do on the engine between now and the end of the season. The list included the parts we intend to modify, when, and the level of power improvement expected. IndyCar approved all our requests and just needed to know from us when an engine would be updated. The first update is planned for Toronto. The next step will be for Edmonton. We will bring as much performance as we can, with reduced fuel consumption which is as important, and which means that we will accept the 10-spot grid penalty for any upgrade."

On Monday, before heading to Toronto, the Lotus HVM Racing team went testing at Mid-Ohio. This was the first test in which the team has participated since the start of the season. The team worked on different areas of the car, as the new Lotus engine was only installed after the test.

The city of Toronto is definitely a favourite spot among the IndyCar teams and drivers. Toronto is the cultural, entertainment and financial capital of Canada. The Metro Toronto area is home to more than 4.7 million people and is often referred to as the “Canada’s version of New York City”.

Toronto has much to offer. Rumor has it that most of the IndyCar drivers bring their wives and girlfriends to this event, mainly for the shopping and fine restaurants. The architecture, the shops, and the people is what Toronto is all about. The energy is palpable in this city. And best of all, Canadians are big open-wheel fans.

The IZOD IndyCar Series is bringing back the ‘push-to-pass’ feature for the remaining five road and street races on this year’s schedule, starting this weekend. This feature allows a driver to add turbo-boost by pressing a button on the steering wheel in order to pass. However, the IndyCar Series has imposed a pre-determined time to utilize the push. For the Toronto race, the total time will be 100 seconds. It will be up to the driver to manage the seconds used. All in all, this should make for a very interesting race weekend.